Many people have asked about Brutus, and how he is faring. He is actually doing very well! His surgery went well, and although he had some discharge for the first few days, and some swelling in the area, he is feeling well and things are looking healthy and normal.
Brutus is also losing his fuzzy winter coat and is getting in his sleek summer coat! He has almost no muscle-tone, and he is still underweight, but I do believe the boy has grown in just a few weeks! He certainly *feels* a lot better, and the look in his eye is brighter. Since his geld, I have noticed that he has stopped being so focused on trying to find girls, and instead he has started to look around and notice things, such as cars, trailers, etc. He used to pass by everything with a single-mindedness akin only to a 12 year-old at the entrance of Disneyland intent on getting on Space Mountain, but now we have a much more pleasant stroll, where he stops to sniff things and look at his reflection in car windows. His tendency to nip has reduced dramatically, and hopefully will drop off altogether.
We have been grooming him and picking up his feet daily, and he is doing much better with both being touched all over as well as picking up his feet without trying to bite me. We have been enjoying our neighbor’s round pen (thank you again!), and he trots around in between stopping and smelling manure and urine spots. Overall, he is a very bright boy who just needed some handling and training. We have only had him for a little over three weeks, and in that time he has gone from not knowing how to lead (ie, dragging the girls around while they yanked on his nose with a stud chain), to walking calmly on a simple rope halter. He was hesitant to get into the wash rack last week, so on Sunday we worked on that, and he walked into it once on Sunday and stood calmly there, and twice yesterday. I will probably give him his grain in there tonight, and I’ll bet that the wash rack won’t ever be an issue again. 🙂
We also have been in contact with one of Brutus’ former owners, and discovered that he was born on March 29, 2011 (so he is officially three years old). His dam is Floricultora (Portuguese for “flower growing”) (three starts, one win- total earnings $5,199), and his sire is Mud Route (14 starts, 6 wins, 2 places, 1 show- total earnings $672,040). He is not registered, but it is possible in the future to do DNA testing if someone wanted to register him.
Many thanks to our neighbors for helping to sponsor his feed. We are now raising money to pay for his teeth and vaccinations, so we would greatly appreciate any help we can receive to help pay for that. Hanaeleh works very diligently to ensure that our horses get the best of care, and we are smaller than we might be, because we want to make sure that we stay within our budget. Brutus was not a horse we would have necessarily taken under normal circumstances, but it was the only way we could ensure his safety. We will continue to update his condition, and will also announce when he is available for adoption! 🙂